About Me

Thursday, 11 February 2016

Any Port In A Storm

It was not my
intention to comment on the situation in and around the migrant camp at Calais
because of the extensive coverage in the media and on the net.

It is the
result of decisions made too late, that did not consider the realities of the
developing crisis and was determined by dated beliefs and ideas rather than any
proper analysis of the situation.

Calais was once English when The Pale was taken after the Battle of Crecy
in 1346 as this list from Wikipedia of those appointed by the Crown to control the
Pale of Calais shows.

It is a list
of the great and the good, which suggests that it was a valued possession.
During the time of King Henry VIII an ancestor was one of them, so this is
personal.

The sorry story
of its loss in 1558 under Queen Mary I, is told by this Wikipedia page if you
are up for the history. It is claimed
that she said that when she died the name Calais would be found engraved on her
heart again indicating its importance.

If the matter
of who really owns Calais were to be put to the European Court of Human Rights
by an interested party, given their unpredictable decisions there might be a chance
of it being restored to England. But whose human rights?

This video and translation is around the web giving the view of a lady of
Calais who is talking about the experience of herself and other residents. It is at odds with many media items and claims
that the French citizens there are being told to stop complaining and to shut
up. They feel deserted by the Government
of France.

It is a
humanitarian disaster for them in that the destruction of their way of life and
town has been imposed on it without their consent and that they have had the
protection of ordinary policing and law withdrawn. This could create an interesting situation.

Quite simply,
if the citizens of The Pale wanted to submit to The Crown and become part of
England and this could be brought about, then the migrants could be gone from
their camps and to wherever they might go across The Channel without hindrance.

Perhaps a
number could go up to Crewe to settle and to mediate between the Eastern
Europeans and the natives, a complicated mixture of English, Welsh, Scots and
Irish origin.